Another transporter apparatus can be found in U.S. Pat. No. 4,329,102, issued on May 11, 1982, to John H. Gray. The Gray transporter is similar to the Seymour transporter in that the round bales are engaged at the forward end of the machine and conveyed rearwardly to be transported in a linear configuration. The Gray transporter, however, is constructed with an offset bale pick-up mechanism that engages round bales to the side of the transporter and elevates them onto the transporter by pivoting the pick-up mechanism to move the bale from the ground onto the transporter. U.S. Pat. No. 5,071,304, issued to Vern L. Godfrey on Dec. 10, 1991, carries the collected round bales in a linear orientation above the surface of the ground, and picks up the bales by hydraulically lowering the entire transporter over the round bale before engaging and lifting the bale.
A two row transporter for round bales is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,700,124, granted on Dec. 23, 1997, to Charles Dufraisse. In this transporter, round bales are engaged by a pick-up mechanism located offset to the side of the transporter frame so that the pick-up mechanism will pivot to elevate a round bale from the ground onto the frame of the transporter where a pusher moves the round bales rearwardly until the first row of round bales is formed. A second pusher apparatus is then operated to move the entire row of round bales from the first position to a transversely spaced second position. The first row of round bales is then filled again to provide a two row transporter configuration for transport from the field to a remote location. This particular transporter has been coupled commercially with the spiral round bale wrapper apparatus disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,793,124 with the first row of bales being fed through the circular hoop followed by the second row after being moved back onto the first row position.
In this commercial configuration, the transporter is powered by the tractor that provides motive and operative power to the transporter, but the wrapper mechanism is powered by its own on-board engine to operate independently of the transporter and the tractor. However, in the specification of U.S. Pat. No. 5,700,124, an automatic coupling device is suggested as being available to hydraulically couple the wrapper apparatus to the hydraulic system of the tractor connected to the transporter. Certainly, a manual connection of hydraulic hoses from the tractor to the wrapper apparatus is possible, although such manual operation requires the operator of the tractor to dismount from the tractor and manually connect the hydraulic hoses to the connecting ports of the wrapper apparatus.
It would also be desirable to provide a transporter apparatus that would be operable to be coupled to a wrapping machine to cause the bales being transported to be spiral wrapped with a plastic strip such that the power for operating the wrapping apparatus is provided from the tractor operating the transporter.